


Carrying Your Love With Me

by GeckoGirl89



Category: Friends (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Developing Relationship, F/M, Homesickness, Joey POV, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 04:36:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10823880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeckoGirl89/pseuds/GeckoGirl89
Summary: No matter where he goes, Joey always takes parts of New York with him.





	Carrying Your Love With Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written in February for this prompt on fic-promptly (http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/499096.html?thread=14992024#cmt14992024): Any, Any, Carrying Your Love With Me
> 
> This fic is set post-canon in an AU in which Joey and Rachel never broke up.

As Joey's movie career begins to take off, occasionally he has to go film things in places other than New York City. Most of the time when he isn't in New York, he's in Los Angeles, but occasionally he shoots on location in more far-flung places.  
  
No matter where he goes, Joey always takes parts of New York with him.  
  
It's not as if he can fit the city that never sleeps into his luggage. He can't even take along many mementos, since he needs to make sure he has room for the essentials. But he does carry several small pictures in his wallet. When his costars (usually the women) ask about his life back home, he opens up the wallet as he talks about the important people in his life.  
  
He has a picture in his wallet of him with all of his sisters at a recent family gathering. The people he discusses his life with usually get wide eyes when they find out he has seven sisters and seem confused when he points to each of them in turn and says their name, as if they're hard to tell apart or something. Joey never had that issue, but other people always seemed to.  
  
There's a picture of his ma and pa as well. Joey loves that photo. They look so happy together in that picture that sometimes Joey can forget about the weirder aspects of their marriage (the fact his dad has a mistress and his mother is somehow okay with it).  
  
There are a couple of group photos with all of his friends. Both of them were taken after Chandler and Monica got together (hence why they were snuggling on the couch even more than usual). One, which is fairly recent, includes Phoebe's husband, Mike, and shows Joey with his arm wrapped around Rachel, with Emma sitting on her lap.  
  
By the time he gets to that second photo, the smiles on the women's faces usually transform from something flirtatious to fond. If they haven't yet, they always do with the next few photos.  
  
There are a couple of individual photos of Rachel and Emma each, one with Rachel and Joey together, and one with Rachel, Joey, and Emma. Joey knows that his voice goes soft and mushy when he talks about Rachel and Emma, and it's not even a calculated move on his part. Joey can tell when women are hitting on him, and it's not as if he doesn't know that seemingly innocuous questions about his background can't be used as part of some "move" to try to get his attention (although it worked a lot better, and more permanently, when Rachel did it on that "date" years ago). Talking about Rachel always dissuades the women who try to hit on him because they can tell that Joey is ridiculously, head over heels in love with his girlfriend. Even though he makes an effort to maintain contact with his loved ones when he's not in New York, Joey misses his friends and family, so he appreciates the opportunity to look at their faces again. He misses Rachel and Emma the most, obviously. And of course, he can't resist an opportunity to gush about the two of them. Joey is so proud of his life, and the people in it, that he wants to shout about it to the rooftops.  
  
As time passes, the people asking about his life do so more out of genuine curiosity than any attempt at flirtation. And the number of women who ask dwindles to a small trickle. He figures out why when he overhears Anna, the lead opposite him who he was worked with a few times, explaining things to an extra.  
  
"Oh, don't bother with Joey. He's married and totally hung up on his wife. And they have a kid together."  
  
Joey remembers correctly explaining to Anna that Rachel was his girlfriend and that Emma was Rachel's daughter from a previous relationship (he keeps the explanations of more complicated things fairly short and simple) when she had asked about his life in New York. But her words push Joey to finally ask Rachel something he's been thinking about for a while. If he's already acting like a married man, he might as well make it official, right?  
  
The latest picture in Joey's wallet is a shot from his and Rachel's wedding. He always smiles when he looks at that picture, when he sees how Rachel is beaming at the camera on the "happiest day of her life." In the photo, Joey's focus is totally on Rachel. He always has a hard time looking at anything but Rachel, and he did so especially on that day.  
  
No matter where Joey goes, New York is never far away from him. He carries that wallet, and his love, with him, everywhere.


End file.
